“Don’t Cry for me Venezuela’

Since the death of Hugo Chavez, things have ‘gone south’ in that southern hemisphere country called Venezuela. There have been shortages of all kinds of necessities. In a recent article in the Times we are told— “After the physical discomfort of running low on toilet paper, churchgoers in Venezula may face a more spiritual shortage– the Church is running low on communion wine and flour to make eucharist wafers.” (May 29th– James Hider).

One report says there is only enough wine for two or three months worth of communion. Venezuela’s state controlled economy has had numerous shortages including the aforementioned ones, and parishes are beginning to say that they will have to have less Eucharistic services if this continues, and presumably people will have to stop eating in general in order to solve the the toilet paper caper. You see the communion wine is made by the country’s largest food company– Polar Enterprises (a perfect name for a company in South America of course). The new President Maduro has decided that the short term solution to the problem is that Caracas will import 36 million toilet rolls just for that city. Obviously, in a political capital there is a lot of… stuff… that happens and needs to be cleaned up.

Mr. Maduro of course blames all this ‘stuff’ on the fascist opposition and during the last week of May he blamed the Spanish language CNN channel of being in on the plot to deprive people of toilet paper and communion wafers…..and thereby destabilizing the regime. One has to admit, if you can control whether the people take in enough Christ, and let out enough ‘skubbala’ you’ve pretty much brought a Catholic nation to a grinding halt. This is the stuff of which conspiracy theories are made— are you listening Dan Brown??